Warning -- may cause maladies including environmental destruction, perverse court decisions, and national collapse.
For my money, the best political blogger around is Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly, who is also a producer of The Rachel Maddow Show and contributes to her blog. He’s liberal, but not doctrinaire and scrupulously fair. His article from yesterday on the Maddow Blogshows him at his best.
The article is the twenty-third of a series that chronicles the lies of Mitt Romney. Benen quotes Michael Cohen of the Guardian, who notes that Romney has a penchant for lying — and a complete ease with it that eluded his Republican predecessor in the Presidency — that is without precedent in modern American history.
Granted, presidential candidates are no strangers to disingenuous or overstated claims; it’s pretty much endemic to the business. But Romney is doing something very different and far more pernicious. Quite simply, the United States has never been witness to a presidential candidate, in modern American history, who lies as frequently, as flagrantly and as brazenly as Mitt Romney.
Now, in general, those of us in the pundit class are really not supposed to accuse politicians of lying — they mislead, they embellish, they mischaracterize, etc. Indeed, there is natural tendency for nominally objective reporters, in particular, to stay away from loaded terms such as lying. Which is precisely why Romney’s repeated lies are so effective. In fact, lying is really the only appropriate word to use here, because, well, Romney lies a lot.
If I understand his article correctly, Benen has identified 30 lies from the week preceding his article alone. I thought that it must have taken Romney more time than that, but I do seem to remember hearing about most of these in the past week.
Copyright concerns prevent me from reprinting his entire article, but the quotes from Romney himself are fair game. I summarize the basis for each lie after it, but Benen’s article is a must read — not only for his analysis, but for the links he provides to show how these statements are lies. Here we go!
1. “It saves $100 billion a year to get rid of “[The Affordable Care Act].”
No, it would balloon the deficit. Health care costs are killing our economy.
2. In the same interview, Romney said, “I think a lot of people forgetting is there is only one president in history that’s cut Medicare by $500 billion and that is President Obama.”
No, the $500 billion were cuts to Medicare Advantage, which was not part of Medicare itself but was a government-subsidized program to give seniors who could afford it extra services.
3. “I see people holding up signs, ‘Don’t touch my Medicare.’ It’s like, hey, I’m not touching your Medicare.”
Romney not only supports Paul Ryan’s budget plan, which replaces Medicare with private vouchers, but is considering Ryan for Vice-President!
Romney endorsed Paul Ryan’s House Republican Budget plan, which ends the Medicare program and replaces it with a private voucher scheme.
4. “[President Obama] has never had the experience of working in the private sector.”
He met Michelle Obama when they were both working as associates at a private law firm.
5. Obama went on “an apology tour” in his first year.
Not hardly. If this escapes being a lie, it’s only because the term is not really defined.
6. Romney said that Syria is Iran’s “route to the sea.”
Iran’s route to the see is its own southern ports. It does not border Syria.
7. “Bill Clinton and so many other mainstream Democrats are revolting against the backward direction President Obama is taking his party and our country.”
Clinton supports Obama’s re-election and considers the prospect of a Romney presidency “calamitous.”
8. Romney describes a local optometrist who was forced to fill out a “33-page” change-of-address form — several times — at the post office.
No such thing exists.
9. Obama is taking away scholarships and charter schools for “kids in Washington, D.C.”
Nope.
10. “[Obama] put together almost as much public debt as all the prior presidents combined.”
Nowhere near it.
11. “It’s immoral in my view for my generation to pass on to these kids the burden of our generation. I think it’s wrong. It’s got to stop. And if I’m president of the United States I will get us on track to have a balanced budget.”
Romney will no more balance the budget than did Reagan or either Bush. Tax cuts for the rich and prospects for more wars would explode the deficit.
12. “[Obama’s] trillion-dollar stimulus [didn’t] create jobs.”
Not a trillion dollars, did create jobs.
13. “[Obama] was told that one small business was having a hard time dealing with Obamacare. He said he hadn’t heard that.”
Check Benen’s site for the review: this is backwards. The business was being hurt by policies like Romney’s.
14. “I was in Las Vegas and met a woman who was worried. She has a business renting furniture to casinos and to conventioners that come to Las Vegas. And when the president said, don’t bother coming to Las Vegas for your company meetings a few years ago, her business dove.”
Obama’s actual quote re Wall Street recklessness, “You are not going to be able to give out these big bonuses until you pay taxpayers back. You can’t get corporate jets. You can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers’ dime. There’s got to be some accountability and some responsibility.”
15. “If we stay on the road we’re on, we’re going to become like Europe…. I don’t believe Europe works in Europe. I don’t want it here.”
Europe is following a policy of austerity, just as Romney prescribes for the U.S., and it isn’t working.
16. “If [Obama] really wanted to make a solution that dealt with these kids or with the illegal immigration in America, then this is something he would have taken up in his first three and a half years, not in his last few months.”
Obama has long pushed for the DREAM Act and other immigration measures, which Republicans favoring Romney have blocked.
17. “I will continue to describe the plan that I would provide, which is, number one, to make sure that people don’t have to worry about losing their insurance if they have a preexisting condition, and change jobs.”
Not only is this not his “number one” priority, he’s not making it a priority at all. The campaign even admits this while it thinks non-experts aren’t looking.
18. “[Obama] jammed through a [health-care] bill [and] didn’t really try and work for a Republican vote.”
Obama erred substantially in pursuing health care — but on the other side, of willingness to give up way too much to win even one Republican vote.
19. Romney also said, “I’m not looking for a tax cut for the very wealthiest.”
Anyone actually need me to refute this?
20. “Ralph Reed has been a real champion in fighting for the fundamental values that have made America the nation that it is.”
If the Founding Fathers could come here to meet Ralph Reed, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson would hold him down and George Washington would curb stomp him.
21. “When you put in place a bill like Obamacare, you attack the freedom of people to make a choice about their own insurance and what kind of coverage they want to have.”
Health care exchanges would provide as much choice as the market could provide — except, alas, a public option. This is also true of Massachusetts Romneycare.
22. “[M]edian income in this nation has dropped by 10 percent over the last four years.”
Stretching back to before the gigantic collapse in the fall of 2012, that is.
23. “Government at all levels is about 37 percent of the economy today — 37 percent. And if Obamacare were allowed to stand, government would control about half of the economy of America.”
See Benen for the link calling BS.
24. “[Obama] insists … Israel return to the ’67 borders — indefensible borders.”
No he di’int!
25. “Obama said if you let him borrow all that money, he’d keep unemployment below 8 percent.”
No he di’int!
26. “[Obamacare would result in] a healthcare system run by the government.”
No such luck.
27. “[T]he path we’re on, spending $1 trillion more every year than we take in, is leading us to Greece.”
Austerity is leading Greece to Greece — and Ireland to Ireland. Good for the rich; bad for the others.
28. “[As a result of Dodd-Frank reforms,] small banks and community banks are finding it harder and harder to make loans to small businesses.”
No, the condition of community banks has has improved since Dodd-Frank.
29. “Obama has not completed a single new trade agreement with Latin America.”
Panama, Colombia….
30. “Unfortunately, despite his promises, President Obama has failed to address immigration reform.”
This was apparently said AFTER Obama took executive action on enforcing the law against DREAM Act kids, and DESPITE his push to induce a recalcitrant Congress to go along with comprehensive reform.
Look — if you want a man who made money by bankrupting companies after he took his consulting fees out from them and then dumping pension obligations onto the federal government, I know that candor is that last think you should expect. Still, can’t he ratchet down the outright lies a couple of notches? Steve Benen needs to get some sleep!
What a great post.
The Bishop Romney is a pathological liar.
He strikes me as a terrible human being with no moral center.
Mean pranks, short temper, cruel to animals, rude, inconsiderate and uncomfortable with and to average folks and all of his bald-faced lies,… eeeww! And just think, all that damning personal stuff is on top of his heartless professional life.
The more we learn about this guy the more of a human turd he seems to be.
the turd is the guy we have in the whitehouse right now his dope smoking hanging around with terrorist , and a racist minister . his do nothing never ran a busniness money is bad thinking . nov cant get here fast enough we kick a socialist out
You’re like “Teen Talk Barbie” except that instead of the likes of “Math is Hard” we get nothing but empty and insulting slogans. Stop pulling your own string so much.
hey diamond you fat overbloaded poster like a ocupoo crap sniffer that you are . you defined how the far left is so out of touch and so far wacked out . if anyone post something on here you attack them .. i do it to attack you back and when i catch you in one of your stupid 300 page post renember danny almonte . you say well lets not bring that here .. just like a fat true lib . bring them facts and they turn into jelly .
Remember Danny Almonte? The kid who turned out to be too old to play in the Little League World Series? Is this your way of telling me that you’re 14 instead of 12? I have to admit, you had me fooled.
I just checked in the mirror and, indeed, I’m fat. You have me there. Good luck trying to find a second thing about which you’re right.
Liberals have no moral center, that is why liberals are in the minority! The fact is Obamais a liberal idiot and like most liberals, he lies and lies, to save face. Rommey, is a great business man, who thinks he needs to appease the stupid of this society….The liberals!
You only have too know a few liberals to know who lies, often! This State is r
run by stupid libs who tell us, that are schools are failing because we don’t dump enough money into the stupid system, but we all know that the reason schools fail here in Californa is that libs make a s### load from little brown kids failing and teachers pay is based on failure. Rommey is not a stong conservative, but he is better than any stupid lib anyday. Look at the state of this State and soon to be this country, if we don’t get bo bo out of the picture! 🙂
Obama “lies and lies?”
Here we’ve got 30 documented lies from Romney, from just the last week. What has Obama lied about?
All I can think of is some campaign promises back in ’08 that he either couldn’t keep or changed his mind about. But you probably don’t even know about those.
What has Obama lied about? Have you read his book? The guy is a big, waffler!
Yeah, he changed his mind or could not keep his promise. What a complete fool you are dear Vern! I remember, when a promise was only given, when you had the intergity to know you could keep your promise. OMG!
Hm… you must remember some time in politics way before I can remember, or have ever even read about.
Then, this is why we need to change the system. I can remember when politicans I knew, kept their promise. It was a time, when PC did not corrupt society. This world has become a cess pool, of politicans trying to buy the vote of the ever expanding loser population. A population that does not care whether politicans have intergity, just as long as they screw over the worker to expand entitlements!
You neglected to provide examples. How about 30 from the whole book instead of just one week?
michell renember your in here with the ocupoo crowd of vern and their SO CALLED LAWYER .. so you know how they think and rommey is the devil while the real satan really sits in office right now haaaaaa
what has obama lied about . oh i spent 25 years in rev wrights church and never heard him say those bad things aahhhhhhhhhh ok sure .
Those things that he said on exactly one day when Obama wasn’t there, you mean.
oh yeah i belive that one diamond
If there was evidence beyond that one video of that one sermon it would have been played so often on Fox News that you’d be singing yourself to sleep with it.
no diamond i go to sleep wnen your pig friend ed schultz and that station that you watch mslsd is on , nice ratings the only bleep they get is people on lsd like maybe yourself .
#10 re public debt…10. “[Obama] put together almost as much public debt as all the prior presidents combined”
In order for this to be a lie, one must consider the reductions in debt from presidents as a negative addition. I think a lot of people would only look at the actual debt added and not include debt reduced by certain presidents when saying that President Obama has added almost as much debt as all Presidents combined…I would not say that this is a lie as much as a difference in defining of terms. The lie was determined by looking at the debt at day 1 of Pres Obama’s administration ($10.62T) compared to now ($15.67T) instead of looking at the debt added during the prior presidential administration’s that have added debt.
#9…re WA DC schools. It was not in President Obama’s budget so one could surmise that Obama would like to cut them despite him signing the bill once it was passed by both sides of Congress.
My gut tells me this is the same as many of the above cited lies…not technical lies, possibly misleading but so is saying that they are just lies. Unfortunately, each of these likely also require a more detailed analysis and agreement of definition which likely would not be agreed upon by Gov Romney and those who are calling them lies.
How about the two I site below? Those are not “misrepresentations” or merely attempts to “mislead” And please, we need to talk about the definition of a lie? How very Clintonesque of you!
No, those are outright lies. Romney is lying when he says Obama hasn’t put forth a “plan to get us working again. That’s not a misrepresentation. It’s a lie. And the Iran comment…that is also an outright lie.
Didn’t your parents teach you what a lie was? It’s not nice to lie about what other people say and do.
Anon, if you knew my parents you would know that they are great parents who gave me more than I deserved- both in experiences and knowledge. I can only hope to be a great as they were, but I strive everyday to do so. I will stop at that as far as what they ultimately taught me, which probably is one of the biggest testaments of what they taught me.
I am sure that on many of these a lot of people would consider to be outright lies. Unfortunately, there is some interpretation involved…has Holder lied on Fast/Furious, was Vern lieing when he said that Alt 3 provided nothing? Does someone lie when they get an answer wrong on a test that they think is right or is the answer just false? There certainly are differences between falsehoods (i.e. getting an answer wrong on a test) versus lies. I am wrong a lot of the time…it does not mean that I am a liar (at least I don’t think so).
I have no doubt that a lot of these statements are intended to be ultimately misleading and politically based and at worst out right lies yet still politically based.
As far as the two you site below, although I certainly am not going to go through each and every lie above as I stated before, I will specifically address one of your two for times sake (and the one that is more in my knowledge base)…the first one regarding a plan to get us back to work- You indicate that the American Jobs Act was Obama’s plan to put us back to work and therefore Romney was lieing about saying he has not put forth a plan to put us back to work. I will think like him for a minute (or anyone else that may think he has not put forth a plan)- yes, it was a plan, but one certainly can debate whether it would put us back to work. If one does not believe that his plan would put us back to work, would he really have put together a plan to put us back to work? Just because the person speaking about the plan says that the plan would put us back to work does not mean that everyone has to agree with the details and they certainly would be within their right to indicate that the plan will not achieve its goals. If one does not believe that the plan set forth would put us back to work, then is it really a lie for that person to say that a plan to put us back to work has not been put forth? Yes, 100% politically motivated, possibly misleading, and double speak that only politicians would think is appropriate for every day conversation.
Like I said before, how very Clintonesque of you.
Clinton was a politician. Obama is a politician. Romney is a politician. I am not a politician, but if you want to understand a politician, sometimes you have to think like one.
You asked me to respond to your sited lies below, which I did… If you don’t like the answer, that is fine, but hopefully you can at least agree that I responded to your question.
I didn’t lie about getting “nothing” from Alt 3. It is only SLIGHT hyperbole. I admit right up front that non-toll paying 405 drivers would go from having 5 free lanes and 1 carpool (2+) lane, to 6 free lanes. At the cost of $1.4 billion and years of nightmarish construction. From my point of view, I call that “nothing.” To TJ, who doesn’t like carpool lanes, it IS something, a slight improvement, though I doubt even he’d say it’s worth those costs.
But I’ll hyperbolically call it “nothing” and in the same breath admit that we’re ditching a carpool lane, so I dont’ think that qualifies as a lie. Not Romney-style, not even Clinton-style.
It’s not that I didn’t like your answer. I’ll grant you that it IS a response…good on you. You responded. I just think it’s a load of prevaricating bullshit, that’s all.
VN- I think your response proves exactly my point on there are varying definitions. I also would not consider your “nothing” a lie especially considering the follow up conversation and clarification…however, someone could definitely take your quote, put it on a list, show why they thought it was wrong and say that it was a lie.
Putting aside the reasonableness of assigning responsibility (and several other things), is it safe to assume that Romney is asserting that 5.05 is “almost as much as” 10.62? That seems like a crime against math. I’d accept “almost a third of the debt has accrued during the Obama Administration as a correct use of the word “almost” — 5.05 is almost a third of 15.67 — but his statement as presented is a lie on mathematical terms alone, similar to saying that Obama is “almost” the 150th American President.
So, as I was sitting in church yesterday I realized that my response to #10 above was totally offbase- don’t know why it happened it church but it just literally popped into my head. I wish that I was at a computer so I could post this earlier but to no avail due to family obligations. My response actually hurts Romney’s statements (i.e. the amount of debt added by all presidents who actually added debt is much higher than the $10.62T starting point)…sorry about that to everyone who was scratching their head. As I have said or implied numerous before, I will readily admit when I am wrong and I always reserve the right to improve with time.
Haha, I was at church Thursday night, running a choir rehearsal – and plotting out my response to you in regards to highway lanes. Maybe it’s a place where you can focus your thoughts… or, in my case, where you’re thinking of anything but religion.
Very funny…maybe should both spend more time at church…
Allow me to add a couple to that list”
Romney: “[W]ith America in crisis, with 23 million people out of work or stopped looking for work, he hasn’t put forth a plan to get us working again. Now I know we’re getting close to an election so he’ll come out with one soon, but three and a half years later, we’re waiting.”
Actually, in January’s State of the Union Speech, Obama called for swift enactment of his “American Jobs Act.”
I especially like this gem:
Romney: “This is a president who has failed … to communicate that military options are on the table and in fact in our hand. And that it’s unacceptable to America for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
Obama, in an interview with Jeffery Goldberg just a week before Romney’s lie: “In the conversations I’ve had over the course of three years, and over the course of the last three months and three weeks, what I’ve emphasized is that preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon isn’t just in the interest of Israel, it is profoundly in the security interests of the United States, and that when I say we’re not taking any option off the table, we mean it … “
All politicans lie! Get over it! Its how and why they are lying that matters. Obama is a sneeky sh** and not to be trusted on any level. Rommey is not to be trusted and will be tested to make sure he is not another Obama.
I had not taken you for a moral relativist and nihilist. OK, actually I did, but I never expected you to agree.
michelle great to have you back.. i go on this loon site once in a while , when i need to laugh i go here and see all the zany out of this world post that they put on here .. if i need to sleep i will read one of diamonds post usually page 1 of 3000 , by then my eyes will be getting real heavy .. keep fighting the good fight the whole nation knows that their way of thinking is toast ..